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America's 35 most LGBT friendly cities and everything you want to know about them

The Vocativ Queer Index was put out into the world yesterday, and now tons of queer-related info about the country's top 35 LGBT-friendliest cities is neatly available through one interactive map.

In addition to naming the top cities, Vocativ provides easy-to-read facts and figures about each locale, like percentage of queer adults, statuses of marriage equality, adoption laws, LGBT politicians, hate crimes, nightlife, sports, media, and more. You can view the information by category or check out each city by the numbers.

Vocativ got unabashedly scientific to curate this detailed map:

Coinciding with national LGBT Pride Month, we used a unique combination of data sets to provide a picture of LGBT life, real life, across the country. To determine the top 35 queer-friendly cities in the U.S., Vocativ started with the 100 most populous metropolitan areas, according to 2013 census data, and analyzed a trove of state-and city-level information, as well as open Internet sources such as Facebook, Craigslist and GayCities.

In total, our Queer Index used 32 data sets to measure 16 different factors, from livability indicators like same-sex marriage laws and the rate of hate crimes, to lifestyle metrics like the concentration of out singles and the availability of hookup opportunities. (While we tried to be fully inclusive, we were limited by available numbers on bisexual and trans folks for some of our categories.)

It may not come as a surprise that Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco top the list, but other, more surprising areas—like Worcester, MA (better known to my fellow Bostonians as "Wuh-stah")—make for a geographically inclusive and interesting list. Even Yahoo and The Huffington Post have taken note.

Scott Cohen, CEO of Vocativ, said of the new Queer Index:

For Pride Month, we wanted to create a useful, fun guide to LGBT life across the country. We started off with a simple premise: What's life really like for the queer community. From there we homed in on the community's passions, concerns and daily realities—and then we started collecting the data. Diving into the numbers, we learned new things about known LGBT meccas. For example, New York City has the most hate groups in the country. We also found countless surprises. Who knew that Memphis has the most single lesbians per capita in the country?

Released during Pride Month, the Vocativ Queer Index shows that being LGBT-proud is a diverse, multifaceted experience throughout the country.

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